Alone in the Universe: Why Our Planet Is Unique

by John Gribbin

The acclaimed author of In Search of Schrödinger's Cat searches for life on other planets

Are we alone in the universe? Surely amidst the immensity of the cosmos there must be other intelligent life out there. Don't be so sure, says John Gribbin, one of today's best popular science writers. In this fascinating and intriguing new book, Gribbin argues that the very existence of intelligent life anywhere in the cosmos is, from an astrophysicist's point of view, a miracle. So why is there life on Earth and (seemingly) nowhere else? What happened to make this planet special? Taking us back some 600 million years, Gribbin lets you experience the series of unique cosmic events that were responsible for our unique form of life within the Milky Way Galaxy.

Written by one of our foremost popular science writers, author of the bestselling In Search of Schrödinger's Cat Offers a bold answer to the eternal question, "Are we alone in the universe?" Explores how the impact of a "supercomet" with Venus 600 million years ago created our moon, and along with it, the perfect conditions for life on Earth

From one of our most talented science writers, this book is a daring, fascinating exploration into the dawning of the universe, cosmic collisions and their consequences, and the uniqueness of life on Earth.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Physics, Biology, Popular Science, Astronomy, Nature

240 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 31, 2011

About the author

John R. Gribbin is a British science writer, an astrophysicist, and a visiting fellow in astronomy at the University of Sussex. His writings include quantum physics, human evolution, climate change, global warming, the origins of the universe, and biographies of famous scientists. He also writes science fiction.

Reviews

[Andrés Astudillo · Rating 5 out of 5]

He visto que este libro tiene puntaje de 3.42 estrellas, pero también he visto que quienes le dan un mal puntaje son personas que no leen divulgación científica. Y ya veo por qué: solo para pasar por la introducción, hay que tener una base de astrofísica y otra de genética, habiendo ya tenido lecturas sobre cosmología. He visto que mencionan situaciones totalmente inverosímiles, pero, he aquí la gran bomba, y no es un argumento ad verecundiam, pero simplemente el libro es la síntesis de diversos estudios, que van desde astrofísica, hasta paleontología. Si es que uno tiene un poco de experiencia (y es válido también si es que no se la tiene) leyendo divulgación científica, uno no puede evitar sentirse curioso por la vida en este libro. John Gribbin nos plantea argumentos basados en estudios de Carl Sagan, de Stephen Jay Gould, de antropólogos, de geólogos, y astrobiólogos, en donde los sistematiza, y simplemente colocan todas las variables que de una u otra manera han logrado converger con la existencia no solo de vida (las células procariotas primordiales), sino con lo que es una apología con el concepto de "civilización tecnológica", lo cual es sumamente improbable o poco probable.

Primeramente, vale aclarar el concepto de vida. ¿Qué es la vida? es una pregunta que hasta el mismo Schrodinger se hizo y fue incluso el título de uno de sus libros. Podemos pensar que vida es un cuerpo animado, que goza de motricidad, y cumple con un ciclo que involucra la perpetuación de la especie. Partiendo de este punto, vida puede ser tanto una bacteria, como un escorpión, o cualquier otra especie de entomofauna, pasando por herpetofauna, mastofauna, ornitofauna, etc., hasta llegar al ser humano. Ahora, no es lo mismo cualquier otra especie, sea un bacilo de Koch, como otra que ha construido Generadores Termoeléctricos de Radioisótopos, motores de combustión interna, y básicamente la manipulación de variables para preguntarnos el mismísimo origen del universo. Solo una lo puede hacer y lo ha hecho, o ¿acaso hemos visto a gatos hacerse esta pregunta?. No.

Ésta es la base del libro, la improbabilidad de que exista una civilización tecnológica como la nuestra. Leer cada uno de los capítulos es incrementar el grado de incertidumbre y minimizando la probabilidad de que exista vida como la nuestra, y verdaderamente vivir, es el conjunto de accidentes y azar que se han acumulado a lo largo de la historia; No valorar este argumento es negar el método científico y es negar a la condición humana. Ni siquiera empezar con el argumento creacionista. Desde la posición de la Vía Láctea, pasando por la franja de vida que nos sitúa en un lugar amigable para que la vida floresca, hasta la cantidad de átomos de hidrógeno que hay en el Universo, son argumentos que soportan al libro. No es coincidencia de que los elementos que más existen en el universo pueden crear ARN, pero el ADN como tal, tiene enlaces de fósforo y carbono, los cuales (oh, que azarosa probabilidad), son elementos más complejos que se generan en las reacciones termonucleares de las estrellas en estado de Primera Secuencia.

Este libro es necesario en la biblioteca de todo amante de la ciencia, y también de la vida. Está escrito en lenguaje no técnico, a pesar de que algunos conceptos son explicados en el mismo libro. Tiene un apartado de lecturas recomendadas, y de manera muy directa, me ha hecho valorarnos como especie, ya que es sumamente improbable que exista vida como la nuestra.


Más improbable que vivir en este Universo, en un planeta apto para la vida, con unos bosones calibrados específicamente para que las partículas elementales tengan las propiedades justas para formar átomos que a su vez puedan formar moléculas orgánicas que muten en vida a lo largo de los eones, es conocer a las personas. Cuando conoces a otro ser humano, y éste es especial, verdaderamente lo es; es casi imposible que coincidas con esa persona en el espacio y en el tiempo correcto, y más aún, que sea como esa persona es.

[Koen Crolla · Rating 1 out of 5]

Gribbin has said some phenomenally stupid things in past books, but he's really outdone himself in this one.
The Reason Why starts from a dubious premise — Earth is uniquely suited to life — and throws both legitimate science terribly abused and outright, borderline innumerate bullshit at the reader for two hundred pages in the hope that any of it stick. Most arguments take the following form:

1. X happened at some point in our galaxy's/solar system's/planet's history;
2. X has positive (or neutral, hand-waved into significance) implications for life;
3. Therefore, X must be necessary for life.

Or possibly:

1. Y happened at some point in our galaxy's/solar system's/planet's history;
2. Y has negative implications for life;
3. Therefore, life must be very unlikely in this hostile universe.

How common X is, or how rare Y, is usually brushed under the rug, and in the end all likelihoods are multiplied and held up as proof that life on Earth must be incredibly unlikely; sufficiently so that there won't be any on any of the trillions of trillions of other planets in the universe. It's the fine-tuned universe all over again, except that the bullshit Gribbin desperately wants to believe isn't God. None of it will be convincing to the sort of person who picks up books from the Popular Science section of their bookstore or library.

I don't know if Lovelock has turned Gribbin's brain to mush or if this is some pre-existing condition, but the only thing this book serves to demonstrate is that scientific literacy, which Gribbin does possess, does not make a person immune to disingenuous rationalisations in the service of things they merely want to be true.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this book, the author (a prominent British scientist) lends one more voice to the stark conclusion, which several other authors have raised lately, namely that we are alone in the Milky Way. Yes, this is in spite of the numerous recent discoveries of potentially habitable planets around other stars.

This all stems from Fermi's paradox -- in 1950, noted nuclear physicist Enrico Fermi, while having lunch with colleagues, suddenly blurted out "Where is everybody". He reasoned that if there was any other technological civilization in the Milky Way, then it was almost certainly many thousands or millions of years more advanced, and, if so, then surely some from that civilization would have explored and colonized (at least with robotic probes) all reasonably habitable locales in the Milky Way, including ours. Yet we do not see any evidence of such visits. So they must not exist.

After a rather thorough discussion of all of the ways in which our own planet is, apparently, unique, Gribbin comes to a similar conclusion:

"On a planet like the Earth, life may only get one shot at technology -- we have exhausted the easily accessible supplies of raw materials, so if we destroy ourselves the next intelligent species, if there is one, won't have the necessary raw materials to get started. There are no second chances. And that is the last piece of evidence that completes the resolution of the Fermi paradox. They are not here, because they do not exist. The reasons why we are here form a chain so improbable that the chance of any other technological civilization existing in the Milky Way Galaxy at the present time is vanishingly small. We are alone, and we had better get used to it."

[Nola Tillman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Anyone who has taken a significant number of science classes will likely come to this book with the same bias I have, having been repeatedly taught that the Earth, the solar system, and the Milky Way are in no wise special. But Gribbin argues a perspective different from most scientists - that in the galaxy, at least, intelligent life is a rare occurrence, and that the Earth is likely exceedingly special, if not completely unique.

Gribban's arguments are often hampered by the fact that they are frozen in a book. Anyone who has followed the updates of NASA's Kepler mission will raise their eyes at the fact that, at publication, only Jupiter-like planets had been discovered. Similarly, Gribbin knocks out red dwarfs as potentially hosting habitable planets, though research in the last few years suggests life could thrive. Such problems are, of course, not the fault of the author, who can only work with the data available and not what will one day be known.

Leaving that slight problem behind, Gribbin does an excellent job of walking the non-scientist through conditions that make the sun, the solar system, and the Earth unique. He lays out his arguments for the conditions necessary for life to evolve, and why it would take a fortuitous string of actions to allow it. If you want to know a bit more about the galaxy, he provides clear descriptions of what makes it tick.

But. While his arguments are logical and well laid out most of the time, they also feature flagrant omissions that frustrated me. Here are just a few:

*Gribbin argues that the extrasolar planets observed at the time were 'hot Jupiters' - large gas giants that stay close to the sun. He does note in passing that observational techniques are skewed toward finding such planets - when studying planets that gravitationally tug at their parent star, large, close bodies will be easiest to spot. Despite this, he uses the dominance of these discoveries to argue that small rocky planets are rare. Of course they were rarely seen; the observations were (admittedly) biased toward large planets due to technological limitations!

On a side note, NASA's Kepler has shown, instead, that rocky planets abound throughout the galaxy.

*Gribbin also argues that a moon that is proportionately as large as its planet as Earth's is rare. However, he is basing it off the observation of four rocky planets, which is a 25% probability. He is careful to note that no FULL SIZED planet has such a moon; this is because the dwarf planet, Pluto, has a similarly large moon that likely formed the same way.

These are only two examples, but several abound.

Similarly, the author never uses footnotes and rarely cites his claims. There were a few points he brought up that I was unfamiliar with and so googled. He does occasionally mention sources by name but not frequently. And in at least one case - the idea that the mass extinctions in the Younger Dryas period was caused by an impact - he neglects to note that many scientists oppose this idea, and that the group that has proposed it has no simulations to back up their theory. (In fact, recently a group of scientists from a number of fields published a paper in a respected journal refuting the claim, including an impact specialist who demonstrated that the physics proposed were not possible...and he used simulations.) Similarly, I found very little published work linking extinctions with the passage through the galaxy's spiral arms.

Often, in fact, the author relies on the argument that 'we don't know how a could have caused b, but it makes sense' to state his case, a lousy case for a scientist to make. Then he strings these conceptual possibilities together to assert that humans are it for intelligent life in the Milky Way.

Another trick he frequently employs is the use of the phrases 'like us' or 'as we know it.' The conditions he describes may well mean that there are no other humanoid-like aliens on rocky planets virtually identical to earth - but that doesn't mean another, different form of life could not have come into play on another, dissimilar planet. even now, scientists think life could have evolved on Jupiter's moon, Europa, which orbits outside the defined habitable zone but contains a sheet of ice insulating water, or Saturn's moon, Titan, where liquid ammonia prevails instead of water.

As a side note, having interviewed a number of astrophysicists, astronomers, and planetary scientists, I've noticed that, when asked about the possibilities of life or habitability, they tend to respond with 'that's not my field' and point me toward astrobiologists.

There were a number of points that the author raised that I would like to explore more, but I take most of his arguments with an enormous grain of salt. Still, in most cases, he managed to explain very technical arrangements quite clearly, so he gets points for that. Separating fact from speculation, however, could be a challenge for those who know little about the field.

[Jose Moa · Rating 5 out of 5]

John Gribbin is a great popular science writer and in this book he has made a great job.The book is the complement to the Rare Earth by Ward and Brownlee but the Gribbin book takes a more step an asks for technological inteligent life not only complex life, and makes more emphasis in the astronomical aspects at the light of last breakthougts as our very special position in the galaxy, by why our sun is not common,by why our solar sistema and planet earth are unlikely;the more unlikely is that our planet has a big moon that stabilices the tilt of the earth axis,favoures the plate techtonics ,the magnetic field and long time ago great tides that aided the pass of complex life from ocean to land.In resumen our inteligence is the product of many unlakely steps tha makes the product near to zero.By other hand the existence of inteligence not necesarily drives to technology,for example the dolphins can be te other inteligent specie in our planet but dont have hands,fire nor metal and by that no technology
The conclusión of Gribbin is that we are alone in the entire Galaxy and perhaps in the entire observable universe

[B Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bad news for SETI enthusiasts. Our intelligent, technological species and civilization are the result of a long chain of very low probabilities. Multiply together a string of very small numbers, (i.e. the Drake Equation) and you get a vanishingly small number. Gribbin, as usually, provides a clear, cogent review of how we came to be. Finally an antidote to the Drake/Sagen groupies who think the universe is teaming with radio astronomers. Fermi's unanswered question. "Where are they?" has been answered. They are not there.

[Jack · Rating 1 out of 5]

I thought that the author was actually a little weak on the science. Gribbin would make certain assertions about why particular conditions or processes in evolution were likely to be uncommon, attempt to support with one or two facts, but would then use these assertions later in the book as assumptions that formed the basis of other assertions. For example, he discussed the possibility of the earth crossing certain boundaries of density in the intergalactic medium made by the arms in the spiral of the Milky Way, and attempts to link these crossings with historical mass extinctions in the history of life on earth. However, except for making plausibility arguments for these connections, he is not able to show that readers should accept his assertions - i.e. while the connection is possible, there isn't much scientifically provided to support believing that such a connection is true. He then uses these crossing events to claim that planets nearer the galactic center would experience extinctions more frequently because their orbits are shorter, and therefore intelligent life couldn't evolve on these planets because of these crossings. Thus, assertions become assumptions, and I found this book less than scientifically satisfying.

[Erik · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think the book relied too heavily upon our own, incompletely understood, story of intelligent life on earth (a big assumption!) to argue for the absence of all other forms of intelligent life in the universe. Yes, our story requires some lucky accidents and links in a chain, but there may well be other chains and other stories. The odds of an exact replication of our story and just that story probably are infinitesimal, but that's fallacious reasoning. The odds of an exact repetition of any sufficiently complex event are infinitesimal, but that doesn't rule out the occurrence of many other events sufficiently similar to qualify under a definition of what "similar enough" means. The Fermi paradox is mentioned quite a lot but this argument by absence too presumes that "they" are like "us" as a basic premise, and so is vulnerable to objections. I'm an optimist about intelligent life in the universe, but it is likely so different we would not, in our present state of understanding, even recognize it as such, nor its goals and manifestations in other species. Read Stanislaw Lem's Fiasco for a nice reminder of this.

[Scott Lupo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Super interesting book taking the view that Earth, and the technological, intelligent beings inhabiting Earth, is a totally rare event in a galaxy the size of the Milky Way. I come from the view that with billions of stars in a galaxy and billions of galaxies throughout the universe that it just comes down to pure numbers. There has to be intelligent life out there somewhere. John Gribbin does a good job of saying "Hold on!", maybe we are the only intelligent life in the universe. He consedes that life certainly exists on other planets, but intelligent life, that's a whole different ballgame. The events that occurred over billions of years in our solar system, and there are a lot of them, Gribbin believes is unique and is most likely improbable to happen again. He makes a good argument on how improbable it was that we exist today. Things had to go a certain way in terms of geologic time and circumstances. Of course, we are talking about millions of years at a time (100's of millions, billions) which means really anything could have happened. Of course, we can infer quite a bit of information from core samplings, rocks, meteorites that hit Earth, etc. While he really does make some good arguments I still think we are missing something or that this type of science is still too new to come to any concrete conclusions. However, I always like to read both sides of a discussion to get all points of view. This point of view made by Gribbin is good but I think future evidence will show that we are not alone in the universe.

[Ron · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another discussion of the extraordinary events in the creation of the solar system where it is in the galaxy, how it seemed to have formed, how the earth seems to have formed, and endured, despite all sorts of assaults from without (the Late Heavy Bombardment, the Chixulub impact, the Tunguska event) and within (massive volcanic activity, continental formation and drifting, Snowball Earth and subsequent Ice Ages) that all contributed to the formation of life, and eventually to intelligent, technological life. The premise of the book, its argument and its conclusion are that the circumstances that have led to us, here, now, were so extraordinary that we are very likely the only ones anywhere. I find the argument of placement in the galaxy, where there were sufficient metallic elements in the cosmic mix to create a multifarious Earth, and far enough away from young, big stars that will go supernova and wipe out everything nearby, to be new to me, and compelling.
It reiterated many of the issues in Rare Earth, but from enough of a different angle that it was always interesting. For a short, 20 page book, it took me an unusually long time to get through it.
It gives me some solace in the fact that my genes will predispose me to shuffle off this mortal coil within a decade or so, so I won't be around for the inevitable environmental breakdown once greenhouse gases hit the tipping point and boil everything up. Now to find some arguments for the other side, which will have to be damn good to shove aside those made by this book and Rate Earth.

[John Sheahan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well argued, accessible, informative … But, it was an argument for the emphatic conclusion that there is no other technologically advanced species in our neck of the cosmic woods. Some of the statistical glosses irked me, for example the implication that 0.06% of the stars in our galaxy is a minuscule number. It isn't. When there are an estimated 100 billion stars (not including red dwarfs) in the galaxy, that small percentage comes to 60 million stars.
That we are 'special' in the universe I can accept, but utterly, undoubtedly unique? No.

[Dave Wallace · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like drinking from a fire hose there is so much covered in multiple disciplines that I found myself only wanting small amounts at a time. That said this book is as depressing as an Umberto Eco novel but not because the story (ours as a planet and specie) is like Eco's (if there even is one there), beyond the reader's comprehension, but just the opposite.

[Hemen Kalita · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic book.The main thesis of the book is - intelligent civilization exists only on Earth. The conclusion derived by the author may be wrong but arguments are really strong and informative. I am rather impressed by the content of the book itself, which ranges from Geology to astrobiology to cosmology.

[Julio Astudillo · Rating 5 out of 5]

He visto que este libro tiene puntaje de 3.42 estrellas, pero también he visto que quienes le dan un mal puntaje son personas que no leen divulgación científica. Y ya veo por qué: solo para pasar por la introducción, hay que tener una base de astrofísica y otra de genética, habiendo ya tenido lecturas sobre cosmología. He visto que mencionan situaciones totalmente inverosímiles, pero, he aquí la gran bomba, y no es un argumento ad verecundiam, pero simplemente el libro es la síntesis de diversos estudios, que van desde astrofísica, hasta paleontología. Si es que uno tiene un poco de experiencia (y es válido también si es que no se la tiene) leyendo divulgación científica, uno no puede evitar sentirse curioso por la vida en este libro. John Gribbin nos plantea argumentos basados en estudios de Carl Sagan, de Stephen Jay Gould, de antropólogos, de geólogos, y astrobiólogos, en donde los sistematiza, y simplemente colocan todas las variables que de una u otra manera han logrado converger con la existencia no solo de vida (las células procariotas primordiales), sino con lo que es una apología con el concepto de "civilización tecnológica", lo cual es sumamente improbable o poco probable.

Primeramente, vale aclarar el concepto de vida. ¿Qué es la vida? es una pregunta que hasta el mismo Schrodinger se hizo y fue incluso el título de uno de sus libros. Podemos pensar que vida es un cuerpo animado, que goza de motricidad, y cumple con un ciclo que involucra la perpetuación de la especie. Partiendo de este punto, vida puede ser tanto una bacteria, como un escorpión, o cualquier otra especie de entomofauna, pasando por herpetofauna, mastofauna, ornitofauna, etc., hasta llegar al ser humano. Ahora, no es lo mismo cualquier otra especie, sea un bacilo de Koch, como otra que ha construido Generadores Termoeléctricos de Radioisótopos, motores de combustión interna, y básicamente la manipulación de variables para preguntarnos el mismísimo origen del universo. Solo una lo puede hacer y lo ha hecho, o ¿acaso hemos visto a gatos hacerse esta pregunta?. No.

Ésta es la base del libro, la improbabilidad de que exista una civilización tecnológica como la nuestra. Leer cada uno de los capítulos es incrementar el grado de incertidumbre y minimizando la probabilidad de que exista vida como la nuestra, y verdaderamente vivir, es el conjunto de accidentes y azar que se han acumulado a lo largo de la historia; No valorar este argumento es negar el método científico y es negar a la condición humana. Ni siquiera empezar con el argumento creacionista. Desde la posición de la Vía Láctea, pasando por la franja de vida que nos sitúa en un lugar amigable para que la vida floresca, hasta la cantidad de átomos de hidrógeno que hay en el Universo, son argumentos que soportan al libro. No es coincidencia de que los elementos que más existen en el universo pueden crear ARN, pero el ADN como tal, tiene enlaces de fósforo y carbono, los cuales (oh, que azarosa probabilidad), son elementos más complejos que se generan en las reacciones termonucleares de las estrellas en estado de Primera Secuencia.

Este libro es necesario en la biblioteca de todo amante de la ciencia, y también de la vida. Está escrito en lenguaje no técnico, a pesar de que algunos conceptos son explicados en el mismo libro. Tiene un apartado de lecturas recomendadas, y de manera muy directa, me ha hecho valorarnos como especie, ya que es sumamente improbable que exista vida como la nuestra.


Más improbable que vivir en este Universo, en un planeta apto para la vida, con unos bosones calibrados específicamente para que las partículas elementales tengan las propiedades justas para formar átomos que a su vez puedan formar moléculas orgánicas que muten en vida a lo largo de los eones, es conocer a las personas. Cuando conoces a otro ser humano, y éste es especial, verdaderamente lo es; es casi imposible que coincidas con esa persona en el espacio y en el tiempo correcto, y más aún, que sea como esa persona es.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gribbin takes the Fermi paradox as the starting point and makes quite a forceful argument for why we are probably alone in at least our galaxy. I've read quite a few books on the Fermi paradox and I think this one holds up pretty well and I learned quite a lot during my read through.

It should be said the book is written from the hypothesis we are alone and then Gibbin tries to defend this hypothesis throughout the book which sometimes give the impression that he leaves out some counter arguments or put a bit to much emphasis on certain theories. One example is his short discussion on our solar systems passing through a spiral arm of the Milky Way which he speculates might have been the cause of the Permian–Triassic mass extinction at the end of the Palaeozoic era 250 million years ago. It is not a completely new idea, but it is pretty far down the list on the most plausible list of causes to the event.

The book is at its most persuasive in the first chapters when our place in the galaxy, our sun and our solar system and habitable zones are discussed. Here Gibbin can point to how special our sun is and how relatively few of its kind there is and how special our place in the galaxy is. He can draw from a lot of examples and a lot of data. When he in later chapters gets down to earth and discusses how we (as in both us humans and more advanced, multicellular creatures in general) came about a lot of the arguments feel more like hypothesis in need of data than facts set in stone. He for example judges Ice Ages combined with long periods of drought to have been necessary, by creating evolutionary pressure on species, for the development of the development of humankind from proto-apes in the last 3-4 million years. In contrast to the previous chapters, where he could point to a whole set of different statistics, he has, when discussing life on earth, to draw conclusions from one singular case. But even without firm scientific evidence his hypothesis regarding the evolution of life on earth is interesting and may be supported by future research, or it may not.

I definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in the Fermi paradox. For someone new to the paradox who want to be enchanted by it I think Webb's If the Universe Is Teeming with Aliens ... WHERE IS EVERYBODY?: Seventy-Five Solutions to the Fermi Paradox and the Problem of Extraterrestrial Life is a better book to start with though, but if you want a case for why we are alone then you don't have to look any further than to this book.

[Anoop Dixith · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a reductionist and a materialist, I hold the unpopular opinion that we are in fact alone in the universe. So, I tend to read all material that offer related ideas to justify/falsify my belief. Picked up this book from that perspective. I would have wanted this book to be a lot more technical, but I enjoyed reading it nevertheless.

Even before I flipped the first page, I knew the book would counter Drake Equation parameter and values, and I turned out right. As a believer in the statistical fact that the hype and hoopla about the scale of the universe caused by linguistics-induced bewilderment through phrases like "trillions of stars in our own galaxy and trillions of such galaxies in the known universe" is severely dwarfed by the chance of occurrence of the low key mutation that caused human voice box to be able to produce complex, sounds and thus language, I was looking for more similar examples in this book that would highlight why "life is easy, intelligent life is not".

The book also spends a commendable number of pages exploring the length of the civilization aspect. This part was very stimulating to me because just like Kardashev scale that categorizes the alien civilization based on their usage of energy, I have my own theory of categorizing alien or any isolated civilization based on their philosophical advancement about the meaning of life or the reason for existence. I use this to assess the variable in Drake Equation that discusses the length of an intelligent civilization.

The book explores many concepts orthogonally to the main subject, like James Lovelock's Gaia, Inspection Paradox (that explains why you'd see lot of old people despite average life expectancy being low due to infant mortality in previous generations), the concept of Terrestrial Mediocrity, 95% Rule (which explains why Stone Henge is still standing while the Berlin Wall is not), Fermi's Paradox, Directed panspermia (to send blue-green algae to space and other planets. Though this makes me think why not tardigrades), Cambrian explosion etc.

Crux of the book, though, puts forth theories as to why sun is not an ordinary star (answer is a combination of its size, its location in the arm of the Milky Way that gives him an edge over the revolution around the black hole at the center of the galaxy), why earth is not an ordinary planet, how plate tectonics was central to life, how the pace of evolution was sped up by Milanovich Cycles etc.

The disappointing part of the book for me though was that it did not elaborate to the extent I wanted on how "life to intelligent life" is a giant step up that included countless mutations and natural selection that beats all probabilistic odds. Overall, an enjoyable read for the ones interested in this area of thought.

[Luis Munoz · Rating 4 out of 5]

John Gribbin es un tremendo divulgador de la ciencia y un científico que sabe muy bien de lo que habla. Este es uno de esos libros en los que uno espera que este equivocado pero presenta demasiadas evidencias como para tomar en serio la idea de que tal vez estemos solos en el universo. Este libro es francamente desolador ya que nos pone, como especie, frente al más absoluto vacío. ¿Estamos solos en el universo? Para Gribbin, la respuesta es un rotundo "si".
Discrepar con el autor es difícil y todo se resume a un escepticismo propio de nuestra especie (será realmente propio?): somos especiales no porque somos "únicos" en el sentido de ser diferentes a todo los demás, sino porque no hay nadie mas; la vida es un estadio altamente improbable en el universo y su desarrollo hasta una civilización inteligente lo es más aún.
Adicionalmente, este libro es difícil de leer, tiene capítulos densos (solamente la Introducción tiene 25 páginas llenas de datos científicos complejos), lo que lo aleja un poco de lo que se suele esperar de la capacidad divulgativa que Gribbin despliega en otros titulos.
Es ciencia de la buena, no muy popular, pero con un tinte descorazonador que no es para todo el mundo.

[Guillermo AyalaMartinez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un libro que es necesario leer si queremos conocer el origen y destino del género humano, el autor explica con lenguaje sencillo la intrincada cadena de sucesos para llegar a lo que somos. Antes de la era espacial era creencia común la pluralidad de los mundos habitados, según Demócrito y Giordano Bruno, y también que la Tierra era un planeta común que pertenecía a una estrella común. Así, se pensaba que Marte tenía canales que seres inteligentes construían para llevar agua de los polos al ecuador, que los cambios estacionales que se observaban telescópicamente eran la prueba de vida vegetal, que debajo de las nubes de Venus había selvas tropicales como las de la tierra en las eras paleozoicas. Cuando se enviaron las primeras sondas espaciales a Venus se descubrió que en la superficie del planeta había temperaturas como para fundir plomo, que Marte era un desierto polvoriento con cráteres sin signo alguno de Vida. En sistema solar solo hay vida aparente en nuestro planeta. Los descubrimientos de planetas extrasolares prueban, hasta el momento, que son muy diferentes al nuestro. Se afianza la idea que la vida compleja es un fenómeno muy improbable. Este libro lo explica de modo magistral, por esto le doy 5 estrella

[Daniel Caballero López · Rating 5 out of 5]

Este libro de divulgación es muy bueno, es por ello que le pongo 5 estrellas, me ha gustado en el sentido que toca muchos temas con un poder divulgativo muy grande, he aprendido muchísimas cosas y sobre todo saber que somos muy especiales por vivir y todo lo que tenemos a nuestro alcance.

Ahora bien voy a dar mi opinión personal sobre el tema principal que trata este libro y no es otro de que estamos solos, no hay mas vidas inteligentes y de eso yo no estoy tan seguro, el autor parece mezclar vida inteligente con humanos exactamente iguales a nosotros en otros mundos, de eso evidentemente estamos seguros al 95% que nunca encontraremos humanos.

La vida inteligente es posible que se haya desarrollado y evolucionado adaptandose a otra estrella, en una luna de un planeta gaseoso o un planeta rocoso parecido al nuestro, es un sesgo muy grande que tiene el autor pensando que somos únicos, como especie humana si pero como inteligencia no estoy tan seguro, como nadie lo sabe este libro te hace pensar en ello.

Lo recomiendo es muy fácil de leer y muy divulgativo.

[mxd · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is like being eight and sat down by your dad to be told why Santa couldn't possibly make it down a chimney. I almost imagine Gribbin as a Scrooge like figure repeatedly saying, "Aliens? Humbug!!!". On the other hand, there is no doubt at all that this book really does make you think about the miracle of being here and existing. And I don't mean miracle in any religious sense, but rather in just the fantastical nature of everything that has happened to make it possible for us to do something (that seems) as simple as just existing. I really did enjoy and appreciate this book, mostly because I like the idea that we as a species on this planet appear to be a bit of an accidental pregnancy, which is quite hilarious.

[Bayram Erdem · Rating 5 out of 5]

John Gribbin'in Her Şeyin Nedeni kitabının bende uyandırdığı duygu dehşet bir yalnızlık ve karamsarlık oldu. Güneşimiz zamanla büyüyecek ve etrafındaki her şeyi yutacak. Dünya bir gün kesin olarak yok olacak. Ve bizim gidecek ikinci bir evimiz yok. Bilim Kurgu romanlarında insan uygarlığının kesintisiz devam ettiği ve galaksileri kolonileştirdiği anlatılır. Buna güvenip elimizdeki tek mavi gezegenin kaynaklarını umarsızca tüketmeyelim. Kendimizi hazırlasak iyi olur.

İlk insan Dünya'da doğdu; son insan da Dünya'da ölecek.

[Derek Irving · Rating 4 out of 5]

The version I read was called “The Reason Why”. Good, clear and logical. It does seem from this evidence that our existence is a matter of multiple factors conspiring to provide a unique environment for intelligent life. Despite this however, I would still like to believe we are not totally unique.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Intelligent life is amazingly unlikely and rare; perhaps we should take better care of the only planet where it exists.

[Ajmer Somal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating clarity of our miniscule place in the universe, with plethora of explanations and facts.

[Funda Guzer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kütüphane kitabı. Konuya ilgisi olanlara önerilir . Sonuç oldukça çarpıcı .

[Ushan · Rating 3 out of 5]

In 1986, Polish science fiction writer Stanisław Lem reviewed a fictional book called Das kreative Vernichtungsprinzip. The book wonders why, after several decades of search, SETI failed to find an extraterrestrial civilization capable of sending interstellar radio signals. The answer, according to the fictional author, is that there is only one civilization capable of doing it in the Milky Way, our own, which appeared and acquired this ability due to a series of improbable destructive catastrophes. This nonfiction book, published 25 years later, says the same thing.

Earth's astronomic and geologic history is unique and unlikely. Its magnetic field protects life from energetic charged particles in the solar wind. The field is generated by currents in Earth's liquid outer core. A significant source of the heat that keeps it liquid is decay of radioactive potassium, thorium and uranium. Where did these radioactive isotopes come from? From a supernova that exploded close to the Solar System as it was forming. Without the supernova, Earth would have no significant magnetic field. If, on the other hand, the supernova had exploded a few billion years later, it would have burned out life on Earth. Early in the history of the Solar System, Earth seems to have collided with a Mars-sized planet named Theia; the iron cores of the two planets merged, and the debris of the collision formed the Moon. Without the collision, Earth's core would have been smaller, and its crust too thick for plate tectonics, and there would have been no Moon, which stabilizes Earth's rotation. Whether there would have been life on Earth in this case, no one knows, but with Earth's axis of rotation wobbling around, definitely not in the present form. In the Cryogenian geologic period, all or almost all Earth was covered with ice several times; the Cambrian Explosion, when most modern phyla of animals appeared in the fossil record, followed less than 100 million years ago. If the latter is a consequence of the former, and the former was caused by cosmic events such as the tail of a gigantic comet nucleating ice crystals in the upper atmosphere of Earth and increasing Earth's albedo, then without this comet there would have been no complex animals. And so on.

The problem with this argument is that we only have one example of a planet with life, let alone a technological civilization. A few species of extremophile bacteria can withstand massive amounts of radiation. On a planet with no magnetic field, would this be true of all life, or would there be no life other than these bacteria? No one knows. The brain size of hominids has been slowly increasing since the time of the australopitecines till the present; this period is also the time of the Quaternary ice age, the first one in 200 million years. Were the climactic changes driving the increase in brain size, so if a planet with australopitecine-like animals is not in an ice age, they won't evolve into humans? No one knows.

This book tries to convince the reader that the humanity is the only technological civilization in the Milky Way. It convinced me that no one knows whether this is so.

[Louisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Science : A History, Gribbin took his readers on a ride through the history of science and concluded that we are nothing special. Ever since Copernicus' heliocentric model and Galileo's eppur si muove (whether or not he really said those words), we know that the Earth is not the center of the universe. We occupy an ordinary planet orbiting an ordinary star in an ordinary galaxy. When life is found on other planets, Gribbin wrote in the final chapter, this view would be complete: even life itself is nothing extraordinary.

That was ten years ago.

Now, in The Reason Why, Gribbin presents us with a rather different view. Here, he tells us that the location and situation of our planet and our solar system are in fact very special, and that the existence of our species depends on a sequence of odd coincidences. In other words, we have been very, very lucky.

Think about it: not only is the distance of our planet to the sun just right (not too hot, not too cold), the distance of the sun to the center of the galaxy is equally favourable. Any closer and there would be too much radiation, and any further and there wouldn't be enough heavy elements for an Earth-like planet to form. The near-circular orbit of the Earth and the presence of our moon have been stabilizing factors, while Jupiter's gravity saved us from many potentially destructive asteroid impacts. Water, plate tectonics, an atmosphere; the Earth has it all and without these conditions we wouldn't be here. While life itself maybe common in the universe, argues Gribbin, we are probably the only technologically advanced species in this galaxy. We are alone, and we had better get used to the idea.

Or are we? With 200-400 billion stars in our galaxy and at least as many planets? With who knows how many other galaxies and clusters of galaxies? Even if we discount all the stars in uninhabitable zones; all planets with wobbly orbits in binary or multiple star systems; all hotter, massive stars and all dwarfish, dying stars; wouldn't there still be an awful lot of star systems left to consider? Gribbin's arguments are persuasive but the truth is, we just don't know. There could be life elsewhere, or we could be alone.

I enjoyed reading this, if only to understand better what is behind the Rare Earth hypothesis. The idea that the earth is unique and that we are special is a flattering one. Gribbin is a good writer, and he gets this thing right, at least: Life is a miracle.

[Jared · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book wasn't quite what I expected, its basically an overview of all the things that had to go right in order for intelligent life to arrive on earth. So it goes from galaxy to star to planet formation in a fair amount of detail. I felt like this was the author's strong point that he has the best understanding of and it was interesting. He also spends a lot of time on the history of the earth and moon and seemingly unimportant things that had a significant effect on allowing intelligent life to evolve on earth.

The author stops talking about probabilities and odds about halfway through the book when he finishes talking about the types of stars that could possibly support intelligent life. After that the improbability of life is largely implied through talking about specific things that exist on the Earth that allowed for the development of intelligent life.

I felt that the book is an extremely good history of the earth and where it came from in an astronomical view. I felt that the author made his point that intelligent life developing on Earth only came about through extremely unlikely occurrences that would probably not be replicated on other planets.

Overall the book was more about why our planet is unique than about being alone in the universe, which is why it gets 4 instead of 5 stars. I am glad that I read it though and I probably would not have read it if it was titled about how our planet is unique.

[Kerem Cankocak · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bilimin neden sorusuyla değil nasıl sorusuyla ilgilendiği artık arkaik bir görüş. Günümüzde bilim her şeyin nedenini araştırıyor. Neden yaşam var? Neden Dünya bu şekilde? Neden zekiyiz? Neden uzayda başka zeki canlılara rastlamadık? Bu ve benzeri binlerce neden sorusu artık bilimin ilgi odağında. Sorulara cevap buldukça yeni sorular geliyor elbette. Ama Gribbin’in bu kitabı günümüz biliminin sınırlarını gösteriyor. Bu kitapta yanıtları verilen ve verilemeyen en temel soruları bulabilirsiniz.
Her Şeyin Nedeni, Dünya’nın Evrendeki yerini sorguluyor. Milyarlarcasının içinde tek bir gezegen fark yaratabilir mi? Gribbin bunun mümkün olabileceğini savunuyor. Örneğin Dünya’daki yaşamı etkileyen en önemli olaylardan biri 600 milyon yıl önce Venüs’e bir “süper kuyruklu yıldız” çarpması. Gribbin bunun gibi örneklerle, Dünya’daki zeki yaşamı etkileyen kozmik olayları inceliyor.

“Yüzün üzerinde popüler bilim kitabının yazarı Gribbin, Her Şeyin Nedeni’nde okurlarına kapsamlı ve lirik bir inceleme sunuyor.”
–Lewis Dartnell Times Higher Education


“Kopernik’ten bu yana Evrenin merkezi olmadığımızı biliyoruz… Gribbin yaşamın da sıradan bir doğa olayı olduğunu gösteriyor”
–Science

“Uzay ve zamana yayılan olağanüstü bir öykü…bu kitap peş peşe gelen kozmik olayların Dünya’yı nsaıl yaşam için uygun bir gezegen haline getirdiğini anlatıyor.”
–Science Focus

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Until I read this book, I was of the opinion that intelligent life somewhere in the Universe was a foregone conclusion. With all the billions of galaxies and stars out there, how could intelligent life not be all over the place? The Drake Equation helped frame up the numbers for me. Certainly the Fermi Paradox (Where are they?) gave me pause, but still the unimaginable numbers of possible stellar systems meant that they were out there, even if they haven't visited us. Well, I'm not so sure anymore. This book did a good job of explaining just how unusual we are, and actually how likely it is that we are the only intelligent life in the Milky Way, if not the Universe, although the book really focuses on our galaxy. I was also interested to read that we probably have 'only' a million years left before an observed star (forget the name - Gliese something) which has been carefully monitored and shown to be on its way passes near enough to our solar system to send a barrage of asteroids, comets, etc. into the inner solar system, many of which will collide with the earth. Previously, I had thought we had until the Sun expanded and engulfed the earth as it died, billions of years from now. Bummer.